The Friend in My Head
Excuse me,
you look familiar.
I swear we've met before.
Are you the reflection I see in the mirror,
Or the slam of a broken door?
You seem recognizable to me:
an old childhood friend,
but one who has disappeared like
the moviegoer,
gone from the theater
before the film reaches its end.
You are a ghost of myself.
I can see that now.
You echo all my thoughts
and replicate my frown.
Tell me, what was it
that caused us to drift apart?
Was it the shatter of my naivete,
or a difference of the heart?
Were you scared when I learned to live with us
not as one,
but as two?
Were you frightened when I could
live, breathe, and speak
freely without you?
My consciousness has been cleaved
into equal parts of two:
I live but I can also observe
detached from the situation, just like you.
The books I've read
have taught me how
to exist, but also contemplate
the now.
You and I are born of the same mind.
We may severed but we are two of one kind.
My thoughts are euphoria,
a flailing of the limbs-
A tether that keeps me suspended
between reality and the rabbit hole I am in.
I dream of an oasis.
I seek to procure a cure.
My thoughts have become ailments.
I've never hidden from them before.
I craft the world around me,
sculpt life with my words.
In my thoughts I find solace.
In my mind, the most familiar voices I have heard.